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The grand jury wanted to indict the parents after seeing the presentation by the Boulder Police Department and Lou Smit
From a previous thread:
"Once again. A grand jury is not given all the facts of the case - just what the police department wants to present. They are trying to get an indictment based on a less than honest story told. Do they usually go along with what the police want? Yes. They want to help those guys who just told the story, and based on what they just heard.... well, the saying is a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich.
On the other hand, you have the DA who must actually take the case to court. By law he must NOT bring charges if he honestly doesn't feel he can get a conviction. One, it is a waste of money and time. Two if the defendant is guilty but wins because the case was taken to trial before it was strong enough, well, they can't be tried again.
Hunter knew all the evidence. He was shown reports from 'bought report writers' who would never be used in court. He saw Foster's garbage brought in knowing he would be discredited the hour after he testified in real court. He KNEW that in a real trial jurors would have known about the DNA evidence, that the handwriting was not a match.
Hunter stood up to the BORG GANG and showed he wasn't going to be bullied into doing what he was legally forbidden to do."
-jameson
"Once again. A grand jury is not given all the facts of the case - just what the police department wants to present. They are trying to get an indictment based on a less than honest story told. Do they usually go along with what the police want? Yes. They want to help those guys who just told the story, and based on what they just heard.... well, the saying is a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich.
On the other hand, you have the DA who must actually take the case to court. By law he must NOT bring charges if he honestly doesn't feel he can get a conviction. One, it is a waste of money and time. Two if the defendant is guilty but wins because the case was taken to trial before it was strong enough, well, they can't be tried again.
Hunter knew all the evidence. He was shown reports from 'bought report writers' who would never be used in court. He saw Foster's garbage brought in knowing he would be discredited the hour after he testified in real court. He KNEW that in a real trial jurors would have known about the DNA evidence, that the handwriting was not a match.
Hunter stood up to the BORG GANG and showed he wasn't going to be bullied into doing what he was legally forbidden to do."
-jameson
I don't think it was so much that Alex Hunter wanted to do the noble thing but remember this was after the OJ debacle...he knew the defense and their experts would out maneuver him at every turn...thus letting the guilty go free anyway and his career along with it...
Alex Hunter had a reputation as a DA who wasn't likely to take a case to court. This case was made for getting away with it if the perpetrators were within the immediate family. He would never bring a case unless he could charge one with the murder or involuntary manslaughter and one or more of the others as accessories after the fact. The grand jury instead chose to charge both parents with reckless child endangerment probably under the premise that the victim had received a fatal head injury in spite of having received a similar blow to the head in the past.
The Grand Jury saw Smit's intruder theory presentation. Generally, the presentations are going to present facts and expert opinions mostly supportive of their theory of how the crime transpired and who may have been responsible. The same criticism would have to apply to the intruder theory as well.
The grand jury instead chose to charge both parents with reckless child endangerment probably under the premise that the victim had received a fatal head injury in spite of having received a similar blow to the head in the past.
Unlikely.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CA4Now
There's a screen shot of the GJ summaries on another forum. When you zoom in, you can read the evidence that the GJ heard to come to their indictment: the fact that the RN was written on the Ramseys' notepad, that PR denied knowing about the pineapple, the 911 tape enhancement, prior vaginal trauma, paintbrush linked to PR's paint tray, the fact that the Ramseys did not have an armed security person accompany Burke as he exited his school, bla, bla.
In order to accuse the parents of having willfully placed their child in a dangerous situation, the grand jury would've had to have been provided evidence that something happened to her in her home in the past.
In order to accuse the parents of having willfully placed their child in a dangerous situation, the grand jury would've had to have been provided evidence that something happened to her in her home in the past.
Actually, the indictments read, "On or between December 25th and December 26th, 1996, in Boulder County, Colorado..."
From your article, "Standards are lower for obtaining a grand jury indictment — probable cause — than they are at trial."
"The district attorney presented multiple possible charges to the grand jury — likely including murder — and that these two were the only ones the grand jury could agree upon. And that, (Denver defense attorney and legal analyst) Recht said, shows why Hunter was reluctant to go forward with any of the charges."
In order to recognize that the family situation was hazardous to the victim, the grand jury would've been shown prior history of incidents preceding the crime. Either one of the parents or the brother was deemed to have engaged in abuse or negligent behavior akin to abuse.
The DA can reject the grand jury's recommendation if they don't approve his presentation for a murder charge. The grand jury in this case came back to recommend two lesser charges. Hunter would've had a lower bar to prove those two charges on child endangerment and covering up the crime.
"Once again. A grand jury is not given all the facts of the case - just what the police department wants to present.
Incorrect / Foster was not on the list/
Grand Jury witnesses
Some of the people known to have testified before the Ramsey grand jury:
Mike Archuleta -- Private pilot who was scheduled to fly the Ramseys to their Michigan vacation home the day after Christmas 1996.
Linda Arndt -- Now-retired Boulder Police detective, the first investigator on the scene.
Dr. Francesco Beuf -- JonBenet's pediatrician.
Debbie Chavez -- Colorado Bureau of Investigation forensics expert.
John Douglas -- Former FBI criminal profiler hired by the Ramseys.
Michael Everett -- Among the first Boulder Police detectives assigned to the case.
John and Barbara Fernie -- Friends of the Ramseys who were summoned to the home after JonBenet was discovered missing.
Richard French -- One of the first Boulder patrol officers on the scene. He searched the house shortly after arriving, without locating JonBenet's body.
Ron Gosage -- Boulder Police detective working the case from its first days.
Pam Griffin -- Ramsey family friend and seamstress who assisted with JonBenet's beauty pageant costumes.
Jane Harmer -- Boulder Police detective involved in the case from the beginning.
George Herrera -- CBI fingerprints expert.
Linda Hoffmann-Pugh -- Ramseys' housekeeper at the time of JonBenet's death.
The Rev. Rol Hoverstock -- Minister from the Ramseys' church, summoned to the home in the first hours of JonBenet's disappearance.
Larry Mason -- Boulder Police sergeant removed from the case in its second week when he was wrongly accused of leaking information to the press.
Dr. John Meyer -- Boulder County coroner; he performed the autopsy on JonBenet.
Fred Patterson -- Boulder Police detective, among the first on the scene.
Carol Piirto -- Burke Ramsey's third-grade teacher.
Merv Pugh -- The husband of Linda Hoffmann-Pugh; he had done some work at the home a month before the murder.
Burke Ramsey -- JonBenet's brother, now 12, the only person other than her parents known to be in the house at the time she disappeared.
Lou Smit -- Retired Colorado Springs homicide detective who worked on the case for the district attorney's office.
Tom Trujillo -- A Boulder Police detective on the case since its earliest days.
Chet Ubowski -- Colorado Bureau of Investigation handwriting analyst who concluded that Patsy Ramsey may have written the ransom note linked to JonBenet's murder.
Barry Weiss -- Among the first Boulder patrol officers at the Ramsey home.
Fleet and Priscilla White -- Ramsey friends called to the house the morning of JonBenet's disappearance. Fleet was in the basement with John Ramsey when the child's body was found.
Tom Wickman -- The Boulder police detective sergeant who has supervised the investigation since the early days.
September 22, 1999
Last edited by virgode; 10-28-2016 at 04:11 PM..
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